Ultima 7 Design Documents, Part the Second
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Joe Garrity of the Origin Muesum, the Ultima Codex is pleased to present another trove of documents pertaining to the development of Ultima 7: The Black Gate.
Another trove of design documents from the Ultima 7: The Black Gate development team.
The first document in this trove details some changes to the tale of Nastassia, the keeper of the Shrine of Compassion, that the bard De Maria will regale the party with if sufficiently prompted. The document is divided into two columns; on the left is writer Andrew Morris’ initial version of the poem, and on the right is Rusel DeMaria’s proposed revisions…which sharp-eyed readers will note is the version of the poem that ultimately made it into the game. (Rusel DeMaria is an author of countless gaming-related books, and was the inspiration for the character of De Maria.)
The second document is a printed-out message from Andrew Morris, outlining his stated needs as of October 21st, 1991; presumably, the various features of the game discussed in the short document were essential for inclusion ahead of another test build of the game. What’s interesting is that at the time this document was written, the game would already have been quite far along in development; we can see reflected in Morris’ detailed requirements that the game is taking shape. The Jim referenced in the document is probably Jim Greer…not the Tom Clancy character, but a programmer who began his career in the games industry as an intern at Origin Systems in 1991; he was soon tapped to join the Ultima 7 team full-time (he also has credits on Ultima 8 and Ultima Online).
The third document begins innocuously enough; it’s an email from Raymond Benson to writers Andrew Morris, Beth Miller, and Jack Herman concerning some type names (references to particular items that would appear in the game’s usecode). However, after that introduction, it moves on to discuss something that was not — that I can tell — previously known to the Ultima fandom: Origin Systems had planned for the nudists (the inhabitants of the Bee Cave) to have a child! Unfortunately, the character — who would have been named “Child”, keeping to the naming convention of “Mama” and “Papa” — was cut due to what appear to be technical limitations; the tools used to build Ultima 7 evidently did not allow for the inclusion of more than 255 NPCs. The message goes on to reference designer Bruce Adams, and the need to inform him about conversations to be included for various NPCs in the game’s dungeons.
The fourth document — and the first exclusively hand-written one in this set — appears to be pseudo-code for how the game would handle the player betting on Sprellic’s duel in Jhelom. It’s difficult to say whose handwriting it is, and the exact context of the document’s creation is lost to time…but it’s fun to imagine that this was the result of a few of the Ultima 7 developers sitting around spitballing ideas before coming up with a working solution.
The fifth document is a list of the join conditions for the various party members in the game. Now, in and of itself, this isn’t that remarkable; we already knew, for example, that some of the companions would refuse to join the party if it comprised more than six members already. What’s notable in this document, however, is that it makes mention of the fact that the maximum size of the party was (at some point) planned to be nine, not eight. The document also confirms that the Emp, Trellek, was indeed slated to be a potential party member…but it also details an interesting limiting condition to his joining the party. Apparently, at one point, the plot of the game would have pitted the character Tseramed against the Emps, so Trellek would have refused to join the party if the “Emp killer” was already present therein. In like manner, Tseramed would have dismissively refused to join the party if a “monkey” (that is, Trellek) was already a member. None of this animosity between the ranger and the Emps made it into the final game.
The sixth document — also handwritten — appears to contain notes on assignments for several members of the Ultima 7 programming team ahead of a September 15 (presumably, 1991) deadline, likely the date of a planned internal build of the game. Zachary Booth Simpson, for example, seems to have been tasked with implementing the teleport functionality, party mechanics (companions joining and leaving, following the Avatar), gumps, and mouse support. Paul Meyer was on point to work on combat and some of the odder monster movements, such as for slimes and silver serpents. Herman Miller was to focus on paperdolling of weapons, and on ship travel. And the list goes on from there!
The seventh document purports to be a complete — and final — list of items in the game. However, the list is anything but final, at least when considered against what we actually saw in the game. For example, in the shipped version of Ultima 7, most Gargish jewelry is referred to as just that; there’s not really any indicated distinctions between different pieces of jewelry found adorning the homes of the Gargoyles. In the item list, however, there’s quite a range of listed items, from “wingscratchers” to “horn polishers”. There’s also a number of change notes throughout the document, indicating the renaming, deletion, or changed spelling of various items.
The eighth and final document, containing handwritten notes that could well be from the pen of Andrew Morris, begins with some hastily-scrawled design notes about the Orrery in Moonglow and how it was to be set up, Caddellite, and the characters of Tseramed (he has evolved into a “Bee Killer” at this point) and Taylor. Further on, it also contains notes about Trellek. However, the most amusing aspect of the document is its second page, which simply shows a DOS prompt (C:U7\USECODE) and, above it, what appears to be an error message: “Shit Happens”. It’s unclear exactly what circumstances led to this bit of text not only being printed on screen, but also printed out on paper…but in context, it looks like either the game or a usecode compilation failed and tossed that particular error message to screen, before returning the user to DOS.
Not that Ultima 7 was ever particularly crash-prone, right?
Anyhow, the usual disclaimers follow.
The images here, in JPEG format, are lower-resolution extracts from PDF scans of the original documents. They are legible, but not of particularly high quality, and thus are not recommended for printing; download the PDF files for that purpose.
Most importantly, though: enjoy! Pull up the images, download the PDFs, and pore over them. Search out every little detail, and enjoy a fascinating glimpse into the nuts and bolts of how Origin crafted a truly ground-breaking RPG. The Ultima Codex is indebted to Joe Garrity for providing these documents, and to everyone who worked at Origin Systems.
Very interesting, thank you for this great post. Unfortunately the “Download Now” button does not work.
Quick fix; should work now!
It works, thanks 🙂